Edited to show what the end result is.


Making Alien Looking Terrain



Not all worlds look like Earth does, nature has many choices on the evolutionary paths that it chooses to follow. This is my interpretation of just one of those many paths. I don’t have a background story to go with this stuff but I am guessing that it is possibly a silicon based life form. I would also make a guess that they are actually colonies of single cell organisms (banded together for the greater good), and not actual plants in the usual sense. Whatever they are they make for a very interesting gaming table.



I had a hard time deciding what to call this stuff (still am not sure what to call it). Regardless of what I call it, I now have enough to set up a gaming table with it. Although it shares several similarities with the crystal terrain I am also doing, I feel that it is sufficiently different to warrant its own thread. Stuff made this way has a much more organic feel to it, while still looking very different from the plants that we are used to.



I had a big breakthrough in the development of ideas for alien life forms, when I stumbled across this on the internet. Melting plastic beads, so simple! Now why didn’t I think of that myself? Suddenly I had hordes of new ideas that I just had to try out. I originally started using them to make more types of crystals, but most attempts ended in disaster. Fortunately, what ended up looking nothing like a crystal looked very interesting regardless. Anyway, after a lot of experimenting with the new material I have come up with a few techniques.



For a minimal amount of effort and expense I was able to create some very interesting terrain that anyone can easily replicate. Let me know what you think!

These ones were made by artistically piling some colored plastic beads on top of some lava rocks and then baking them. The hardest part of making these was not bumping them and knocking over the piles while placing them into the oven. Clear plastic is very hard to photograph, so these pictures unfortunately don’t look nearly as good as the actual ones do. They ended up looking a lot like fish eggs to me.



The pile on the left is the beads I started with and the puddle on the right is what happens when you over heat them. The trick is to know how long to bake them for. You need to melt them just enough to make them not look like beads anymore but still maintain most of the original shape. Experimentation is the only way to figure this out. With the brand of beads I used and my stove, I ended up using 400F for 15 minutes to get the results I wanted.

These were made with small plastic pellets that were heated just enough to fuse them together. It gives them a very grainy texture since the individual pellets are very small.



I found these pellets in the floral decorating section of my local craft store. This particular type of plastic starts out looking almost white when still in the package. It is just an optical illusion since they are very clear when viewd individually. When viewed in mass they appear to be white, sort of like snow appears to be white.



Once melted these look a lot like wet ice since they have the same sparkle and shine. I tried using aluminum foil to make the molds to shape them with. It works really well for simple shapes that have no surface detail.

You're experimenting is great to follow in yet another class scenery thread

Used to mess about with this stuff for coloured wind chime parts when I was a kid, it is great seeing them re purposed like this

My only point is the rock seem over shadowed too much by the rich colour and allure of the crystals. Is the camera washing the colour out? My feeling would be to have some deep colour in the rocks to help contrast against the gems.

Right now the intensity makes the rock pale and leaves the crystals popping out and not a part of the scenery piece.

Personal preferences aside, the affect is certainly exotic and I am dying to get a hobby space back to make projects like these!

- Tael.

I have to agree with you on that Tael. I think that the problem is more to do with the pictures than with the models though. The lava rocks that I am using don’t have a whole lot of color to them but they do have a lot of texture. Unfortunately the texture in them isn’t showing up in my photographs at all. These things are really hard to photograph and my camera isn’t all that good to begin with. The contrast between the highly reflective plastic and the non reflective rocks is a difficult problem for a photography Nob like myself. I am not going to be able to come up with better pictures any time soon, but trust me they look much better in person than they do in my pictures.



This is another technique that I have been working on. It is still very much in the experimental phase, at this point, but it has a lot of possibilities. It gives the appearance of being very fragile, but is actually very sturdy. I used snippets of fishing line and clear epoxy glue to make these. I have several ideas for different ways to use this material, but have only tried this one experiment so far.

I was very happy with the way my fork tine plants turned out, unfortunately that left me with a lot of unused spoons, knives, and fork handles.This problem forced me to come up with a way to use the remainder of my plastic utensils.


A much wiser man than me once said that, “success is the ability to go from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm”. After conducting extensive failed experiments involving heat and plastic spoons I learned a few things. The following description is a little vague because every stove is different and so is the shape and composition of the plastic used. You will have to do a lot of experiments yourself to find what works for you. I heated them in my oven on a glass dish since the plastic didn’t stick to it too badly. However, I still had to pry them up using a spatula. Keep in mind that you don’t want to actually melt the plastic just make it pliable enough to work with. As the plastic heats up it goes through several stages. You will need to recognize these stages and stop the process at different points depending on what you are trying to do.

The first stage is pliable enough to shape and has very minimal shrinkage. The plastic cools off very rapidly and you only have a very short window in which to shape them before they become brittle again.


In the second stage the shrinkage becomes very pronounced. You will get a lot of neat effects, but they can be a little unpredictable.

Stage three is air bubbles. These can also add some very neat effects, however they are very unpredictable. They can range in size from very small to most of the piece of plastic you are working with. Be very careful at this stage because you are really close to the last stage.

Stage four the plastic begins to melt. Unless you are trying to do this, you have probably just ruined whatever you are working on.


I ended up filling the spoon with plastic beads and heating till everything fused together and got pliable. If you fill the spoon completely up with beads then it will tend to splay outward and produce a more open appearance. If you place fewer beads in the center of the spoon, then it will tend to curl inwards and produce a more enclosed appearance

*gives standing ovation while chin stays down on floor*

This is really some very creative use of everyday things, and the result is equally awe-inspiring. The ability to keep up enthusiasm trough failure is really a keeper! I remember trying to melt plastic stuff too, and while it worked on some small parts, I never thought of doing it on an oven scale... Keep them coming. I won't be trying it myself, but logs like yours inspire me to get back to my own projects
Kern

P.S.: Just a question/warning, do you think you can melt plastic in a microwave too?

Thanks for the complement Kern I’m glad that you find it inspirational. I am using an oven because it provides a uniform heating source that is very easily controlled. In theory almost any heat source should be suitable. I once tried to stir a cup of hot coffee with a plastic spoon and got a very interestingly shaped spoon as a result. Boiling water or even a candle would work, but would only heat a portion of the surface at a time. A microwave itself won’t work on the plastic, but it would get water hot enough to work.




These were made by shaping the fork handles and knives, then gluing them together with hot glue.

Yet another use for fork tines! This time I flipped them upside down and stuck the tip into a large bead. The ends were rough where I had broken them off the fork, so I had to round them out with a little sandpaper. A little time in the oven and they fused to the bead and developed an organic looking droop.

Great additions to a top resource Vet, thanks for the explanations too.

The drooping glass vegetation is classic. Quite envious of your gaming terrain until I get some space to do similar

- Tael.

I agree Tael, those are one of my favorite ones also.






These were made by simply stacking some beads on top of each other, and sticking some fishing line into them. Add a little heat to make them more organic looking, and you’re done.

Hmm, not sold on the last ones, but the more variation the better ofc.
How about turning them upside down, using iron instead of fishing tread?
Just a thought to make them a little more natural looking, although that's probably not what you're going for ^_^
Kern

Yes variation is the name of the game with these. They aren’t my favorite ones either Kern, but they do look believable alongside the others. I had several problems when making them, and they don’t yet look like I envisioned them. The fishing line turned out to be impervious to heat (at least with the temperatures I am working with) and refused to droop like I wanted. At first I figured “no problem”, and I just bent them over into the desired shape. Unfortunately the fishing line has a ‘memory” and keeps returning to its original shape.

I like the idea to try flipping them over and have them up on a stock. Since the fishing line is so stiff I probably won’t have to go to the extreme of using metal instead of a clear material.






These were also made by stacking beads. Just a different shape of bead, and a round bead on top instead of the fishing line.

Mmm, this latest example is very good. I can almost see a bulbous, gelatin-like cacti on an arid world.

Considering how resistant the Fishing Line is, have you considered turning the plant upside down? Use the line a stems.

Tael, I have given some thought to using the fishing line as stems. Unfortunately my beads are too large to look good on a very thin stem. I need to either find some smaller beads, or use several strands of fishing line, to make a thicker stock.




These were made using the same technique that was used earlier with the spoons. However this time I used just the bottoms of some extra flying bases that I had lying around (I have some plans for the use of the posts also). They weren’t the GW type of flying base, but the eight sided ones with a high dome to them. I then glued two of them together with a bit of hot glue, along with a bead to act as a stem.

This concludes the second wave of ideas that I have for alien looking plants. I have several ideas that I am currently working on for the next batch, but they are still in the development stage. If you have any ideas along these lines, I want to hear them. Hearing somebody else’s perspective on this is very helpful and has already given me several ideas to work with.

The gelatinous Jungle part three!



Is this what you guys were talking about when you suggested turning the plants upside down? I used some flying stand rods for the stocks on these plants, and the same beads that were used in the gelatinous cacti. Since every flying stand comes with an extra rod I have a lot of them kicking around in my bits box. I am just glad that I finally found a good use for them.

They look great and very much what I was thinking about when we were discussing the previous versions.

I also have a huge amount of flying rods lying about

Did you ink them afterwards? I like the term 'Gelatinous Jungle' haha. (Pretty sure you changed the title no?)

- Tael.

Tael you were hording all those extra rods because you just knew that someday you would find a use for them. Now you do have a use for them! Don’t you just love it when you prove yourself right?

I painted them using the same Tamiya brand clear acrylic paint that I was using on my crystal forest. No I didn’t change the title, I just added to it (for clarification). I actually got the idea for the name from your description of the cacti.


Psychedelic Mushrooms




Making these required the use of several new materials that I haven’t used before. I must say that these are my favorite ones so far! They turned out really good, and have got me thinking about doing another terrain set of all fungi.


The larger mushrooms were made using three sizes of suction cups. Let me make this very clear that I didn’t steal them from my wife’s extensive collection of Christmas decorations! They were purposely bought for this project and no Christmas decorations were harmed in any way during the making of these.

The suction cups were heated till they became soft then shaped by hand into the desired shape. They were then hot glued to a stem that was made by rolling a plastic fork handle between my hands till it was rounded The smaller mushrooms are just some plastic pellets I got in the floral decorating section of the craft store, mounted on a piece of plastic rod.

Tael will probably start accusing me of being a closet Ork player now!

These last two are definitely my favorites! Where do you keep finding those ideas for materials? Must be one of the most creative blogs on att by now
The mushrooms are most definitely good looking, would love to see more. The sniper drones blend in so well they are actually hidden from human eyes! I can honestly not find any possible critiques. Keep it up!
Kern